Storing Up Scripture in Our Hearts

We’ve been thinking this week about the way the Bible places a premium on our ability to remember. And yet, the question we’ve been asking and trying to answer in different ways is, how do we do that? It’s all very well to be told, “Remember,” but how can we begin to remember when our problem actually is that we keep on forgetting?

We saw that part of the answer to that is having our minds and hearts well-stocked with the knowledge of who God is and what God is like. I wonder if you know the great old Scottish hymn that’s called “God the Unchangeable.” Here’s the first verse:

Twixt gleams of joy and clouds of doubt our feelings come and go; Our daily state is tossed about in ceaseless ebb and flow. No mood of feeling, form of thought, is constant for a day; But Thou, O Lord, Thou changest not, the same Thou art alway.

Those are the words of a man who found himself in difficulties, struggling, and eventually realizing that he had forgotten something. And that was that his Lord was the same yesterday, today, and forever. And it was that knowledge that recalibrated his thinking and actually recalibrated his emotions and stabilized him. And all because in the past he had stored up Scripture in his mind and heart.

I don’t think it’s possible to overemphasize how important that is for days when we may be forgetful. Reminds me of something that C.H. Spurgeon, the nineteenth-century Baptist minister, once said about John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress. He said, “Prick Bunyan anywhere and he bleeds bibline.” And he was really saying that John Bunyan was so saturated with Scripture that it simply flowed out of him because it had flowed into him.

You see, the Christian life isn’t lived in a robotic fashion in which we’re constantly trying to think, “Is there a verse of the Bible that will help me in this situation?” That would make for very artificial Christian living. What we really need is so to absorb Scripture that it becomes part of us. That in a sense, we become a walking Bible in human form, and it begins to flow out of us instinctively, the way a concert pianist’s knowledge of the text of the great work that he is playing seems to become just part of him or her, and they seem to play almost by instinct. They don’t even need the score, the text, in front of them.

And the Scriptures really urge us to develop that kind of knowledge of them. And that’s why, for example, the 119th Psalm, its 22 sections and 176 verses, were actually originally written in the form that we have them because they were meant to be memorized by young people. That’s why there are verses about “How is a young man going to live a holy life? By taking heed to your word” (Ps. 119:9). Its emphasis is on storing up the words of Scripture in our minds and in our hearts. Job had done that. He says, “I have treasured the words of God’s mouth more than the portion of my food” (Job 23:12).

When you get to know older saints, you realize how fruitful this is. I’ve known people whose minds seem to have gone who can’t even remember the names of their nearest and dearest relatives. But if you begin to quote a verse of Scripture, they will join in. It’s as though the Word of God has gone deeply into their souls. And when they’re almost beyond fellowship with us of any coherent kind, they’re clearly still engaged in profound fellowship with the Lord. We tend not to think about that when we’re younger, but we are sowing the seeds of the harvest that we will reap in the future, and we desperately need to sow the seeds of the Word of God in our hearts. And that, as we soon begin to discover, is a lifelong process. And we’ll think a little more about it tomorrow.